50 Fun Facts About Cornelius Vanderbilt

Cornelius Vanderbilt was known for most of his life by which naval nickname, once common among steamboat owners?

The Commodore was then the top title in the US Navy, and by the late 1840s no other steamboat owner was called by it.

A debunked legend says a Saratoga Springs cook invented which snack in 1853 for a fussy Cornelius Vanderbilt?

Potato chips cannot have been his doing: Vanderbilt was away in Europe that summer, though a 1973 advertising campaign named him as the picky diner.

Which television news anchor, a son of Gloria Vanderbilt, is a great-great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt?

Anderson Cooper co-wrote a 2021 history of the Vanderbilt family, subtitled The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty.

Sinking Cornelius Vanderbilt's railroad tracks below street level in Manhattan gave rise to which famous address?

Park Avenue north of his 42nd Street depot was plain Fourth Avenue until the tracks were lowered into a cut, which was later roofed over as a tunnel.

How was Sophia Johnson related to Cornelius Vanderbilt before the pair married in 1813 and had 13 children?

His first cousin Sophia stayed married to him for 54 years, and the Alabama woman he wed after her death was a cousin of his too.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's second wife, born in Mobile, Alabama, had which given name, unusual for a woman?

Frank Armstrong Crawford was named before birth after her parents' best friend, and the name stayed when the baby turned out to be a girl.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's transit company carried San Francisco-bound travelers across which country by lake and river?

Nicaragua lay closer to the United States than the usual crossing farther south, and steamboats covered most of the way before a 12-mile carriage road.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's children challenged his will by claiming he was under the influence of what kind of advisers?

Spiritualists he consulted regularly had swayed him, the children argued, in a court fight that dragged on for more than a year.

What honor did Cornelius Vanderbilt receive for donating his largest steamship to the Union Navy during the Civil War?

A Congressional Gold Medal thanked him in 1864 for the ship, which bore his own name and had been fitted with a ram to fight ironclads.

Which American president was aboard the New Jersey train that derailed in 1833 and nearly killed Cornelius Vanderbilt?

John Quincy Adams, by then a congressman, escaped unhurt, while the injured Vanderbilt is said to have sworn off trains, a vow he did not keep.

Who is said to have lent the 16-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt $100 to buy the sailing boat that launched his career?

His mother is the lender in the best-known telling, though an 1853 account says the boat was his father's and young Cornelius kept half the profit.

What kind of business did the teenage Cornelius Vanderbilt start with a small sailing boat in New York Harbor?

A ferry service carrying freight and passengers to Manhattan was his start, after he quit school at 11 to work on his father's boat.

Cornelius Vanderbilt was born, started his boat business and was finally buried in which part of New York?

Staten Island holds his tomb at New Dorp, in a cemetery whose land he had given to his church.

What business did Cornelius Vanderbilt's wife Sophia run in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to feed and school the family?

An inn at a stop on the steamboat run to Philadelphia proved very profitable, and its takings clothed and schooled the children.

Which famous orator did Cornelius Vanderbilt travel to Washington to hire for a Supreme Court fight over steamboats?

Daniel Webster argued it beside the US attorney general, and Vanderbilt's own appeal, next on the docket, never needed a hearing.

Which wealthy steamboat owner hired Cornelius Vanderbilt as a captain in 1817 and became his mentor in business?

Thomas Gibbons, a rich Georgia rice planter, was waging a price war on a former partner, and Vanderbilt soon managed the whole business.

The steamboat monopoly Cornelius Vanderbilt defied in New York was granted to a Livingston patrician and which inventor?

Robert Fulton had died before Vanderbilt joined the fight, so the monopoly was by then held by his late partner's heirs.

The 1824 steamboat ruling Cornelius Vanderbilt helped win at the Supreme Court barred states from interfering with what?

Interstate commerce was Congress's to regulate, the justices held, a landmark ruling that threw New York's waters open to competing boats.

How did the Hudson River Steamboat Association end Cornelius Vanderbilt's fare-cutting competition against it in 1834?

Paid him to leave is no exaggeration: by the end of the year the monopoly had handed him a large sum to stop competing on the river.

Which steamboat rival became Cornelius Vanderbilt's secret partner for thirty years before their Erie Railway fight?

Daniel Drew made Vanderbilt buy out his Peekskill steamboat in 1831; impressed, Vanderbilt teamed up with him so neither would undercut the other.

Which American adventurer seized power in Central America and gave Cornelius Vanderbilt's transit company to rivals?

William Walker lived to regret it: Vanderbilt sent agents to his Central American enemies and backed a raid on the river steamboats that cut off his recruits.

Cornelius Vanderbilt sent an agent to which country to lead a raid that recaptured his seized river steamboats?

Costa Rica was already at war with the adventurer who had taken the boats, and losing them cut him off from fresh recruits.

What was the name of the steam yacht that carried Cornelius Vanderbilt's family on a long tour of Europe in 1853?

North Star took him away at a costly moment: two associates used his absence to withhold money owed to him, and he undercut them on his return until they settled up.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's steamship was fitted with a ram to attack which Confederate ironclad at Hampton Roads?

CSS Virginia, the rebuilt Merrimack, stayed bottled up, and the big steamship was later sent across the oceans to hunt a Confederate raider.

The railroad depot Cornelius Vanderbilt opened on Manhattan's 42nd Street in 1871 was the forerunner of which station?

Grand Central Terminal replaced his depot on the same street in 1913, and a bronze statue of him still stands on its south side.

Which Albany-to-Buffalo railroad did Cornelius Vanderbilt take over in 1867 after cutting off its link to Manhattan?

New York Central directors gave in after he refused its transfers in midwinter, which left passengers to cross the frozen Hudson on foot.

Which financier beat Cornelius Vanderbilt in the Erie War by bribing lawmakers to legalize newly printed shares?

Jay Gould became the one foe Vanderbilt never made peace with, though he never bested the old man in another major deal.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's Erie War rivals beat him by printing extra shares known on Wall Street by which nickname?

Watered stock cost him some $7 million, though he recovered most of the money by threatening to sue.

In which Southern city did a $1 million gift from Cornelius Vanderbilt found the university that bears his name?

Nashville got the gift in 1873 as a gesture to help heal the wounds of the Civil War, though he never asked for the school to bear his name.

Cornelius Vanderbilt left about 95 percent of his estate to which relative and that heir's four boys?

His eldest son, William, once scorned and sent away to a farm, won the old man over by proving a shrewd railroad manager.

Cornelius Vanderbilt lived fairly modestly for a man of his enormous wealth, but splurged on what?

Race horses were his great indulgence; the palaces the family is known for were put up by his descendants.

Which 250-room mansion, America's largest privately owned home, did Cornelius Vanderbilt's grandson George build?

Biltmore, in the mountains of North Carolina, was funded in part by the inheritance George received from his grandfather.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's ancestor Jan Aertson, a farmer from the village of De Bilt, left which country for America?

Netherlands roots gave the family its name: 'van der Bilt' simply means 'of the Bilt', after the village near Utrecht.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's great-great-great-grandfather arrived in colonial New York in 1650 holding what lowly status?

An indentured servant bound to another family, he founded the family that would one day produce the richest man in America.

Cornelius Vanderbilt stayed a lifelong member of which Protestant church, even as many relatives turned Episcopalian?

Moravian ties ran deep: he helped build a parish church, gave land for its cemetery and chose to be buried there.

Which co-designer of Central Park landscaped the grounds of the family mausoleum where Cornelius Vanderbilt is entombed?

Frederick Law Olmsted worked there with architect Richard Morris Hunt, the pair who later created a grandson's vast North Carolina estate.

Which American actor descends from Cornelius Vanderbilt through his granddaughter Emily Thorn Vanderbilt?

Timothy Olyphant, the lawman of Deadwood and Justified, counts the railroad king as a fourth great-grandfather on his father's side.

Which T. J. Stiles biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt won both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize?

The First Tycoon credits him with helping to create the modern corporate economy, well beyond his ships and trains.

Which 2012 History Channel docudrama told Cornelius Vanderbilt's story alongside those of Carnegie, Morgan and Ford?

The Men Who Built America ran to eight parts, first broadcast combined into four episodes, with David Donahoe as the old steamboat king.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's ruthless monopolies earned him which disparaging label, the flip side of 'captain of industry'?

Robber baron was aimed at him as early as 1859, when The New York Times used the image of toll-taking medieval lords for his business tactics.

A 1996 ranking of fortunes as a share of the US economy put Cornelius Vanderbilt second in American history behind whom?

John D. Rockefeller alone outranks him in The Wealthy 100, though other rankings also put Andrew Carnegie ahead of the steamboat king.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's favorite son, George, was a graduate of which military academy before his Civil War death?

West Point training never reached a battlefield: the heir apparent fell ill and died without seeing combat, a grievous loss to his father.

Cornelius Vanderbilt helped which woman, later a candidate for US president, open a Wall Street brokerage in 1870?

Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee were the first women to run a Wall Street brokerage, and they used the profits to start a newspaper.

What type of shallow two-masted sailing vessel did the teenage Cornelius Vanderbilt first work in New York Harbor?

Periauger hulls were often flat-bottomed and carried oars as well as two masts of sail.

What name did Cornelius Vanderbilt give the cut-rate Hudson River steamboats he ran against a monopoly in 1834?

The People's Line borrowed the anti-monopoly language of President Andrew Jackson to win public support.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's transatlantic steamships helped drive which heavily subsidized American rival out of business?

Collins Line ships collected a federal mail subsidy, but the company still went under once Vanderbilt began running against it.

Which railroad, then widely considered worthless, did Cornelius Vanderbilt seize by cornering its shares in 1863?

New York and Harlem had one great asset: it was the only steam railroad running into the heart of Manhattan.

In which country did the widowed Cornelius Vanderbilt marry his much younger second wife in a city called London?

Canada's London, in Ontario, hosted the wedding a year after his first wife died; the bride was 30 and he was 75.

What happened to the huge fortune Cornelius Vanderbilt left behind in the nine years after his death?

It doubled under his chief heir, who took over as the richest American and died in 1885.

What did Cornelius Vanderbilt propose to build across Central America for westbound travelers but fail to finance?

A canal could not attract enough investors, so he settled for steamboats and a short carriage road to move travelers from coast to coast.